Feedback from the readers?

[Javalar]

I have seen this discussion popping up in a few other threads from time to time, and I have also exchanged quite a few personal messages with fellow authors, so I thought it might be a nice idea to start a forum thread on this: I guess we, as authors, are all happy whenever we get a "like" or someone follows our story, or we get a comment.

In fact, I even dare to say that most of us do this for the feedback. But feedback is often hard to come by.

Likes and Dislikes

I realized early that there are some readers out there who are very willing to like and comment quite a lot, and you can see that those readers are really people who constantly remind themselves to do so, because they know that's how they can pay back author's work and dedication. Since then, I adopted a similar habit: Reminding myself to like and comment and participate. I once even had a short conversation with a reader who told me that she explicitly pays attention to "like" non-sexual chapters. As those are what most people here are looking for, and which might be seen as the climax of a story (pun not intended), they get the most and strongest reactions, whereas, from the point of view of writing, it might be actually much more challenging to write a chapter that advances the plot and the narrative.

And I realized something else: Sometimes, when a story is really well written and captivating, I actually forget to like or comment, because I am so captivated that I want to read on. Which means that sometimes the best written parts of a story don't get my reaction, ironically.

A reminder?

I recently tried to add, at the end of one my chapters, a quick reminder. The tone was like: "Hey, reader, by the way, we authors like reactions, so please remember more often to hit 'like' at the end of a chapter, not only here in this story, but in general whenever you had fun here on CHYOA." The results were quite astonishing: The chapter suddenly gained a massive boost in likes. More than it probably deserves in relation to other chapters I've written (then again, maybe it was really better, who am I to judge...?). But I found this whole thing quite interesting in many ways: I could see that there were suddenly names liking that chapter that I had never seen before (and we all know that there are often the same names popping up in the notification sections). Which basically means that, indeed, a lot of readers might not have been aware of how much we authors appreciate some kind of reaction or comment. So, if they do get reminded, they are more than happy to leave reaction. Also: Quite a few readers might experience the same "problem" as I did before: They want to leave reactions, but then they forget. So that's when the quick reminder comes in handy.

I was wondering if it might not even be a good thing if next to the like/dislike buttons, there would be some kind of short reminder ("Hey, reader, don't forget to react if you liked this chapter or you think something could be improved"). Of course, the effect might not be as strong if people see it everywhere. But if we assert that readers do want to leave reactions, they just often forget, something along those lines might probably be helpful.

Dislikes and critique

In fact, by the way, let me add a quick thought on dislikes: I also really love critique and comments on what reader did NOT like about my chapters... The "dislikes" however often leave me a bit helpless, because I have no clue what it was that the readers disliked. It could be that they did not like the topic, it could be that they dislike the grammar or style... there are so many reasons, and if people would comment instead of just hitting the button, they could actually help authors to get better. In one case, I suspect for example that one of my chapters got a dislike because I decided to hand out a "The End" to the story, and the reader might have been disappointed.

I, personally, have started to always comment instead. Comments are not used enough, I think. Of course, if people forget to just click on a "thumbs up" button, why would they take the time to write a comment?

Visibility

I had another conversation where an author with a relatively new story told me that he was surprised to see a sharp drop in reactions: Comments, likes and views. So he was wondering if his story went the wrong way and he lost the interest of the readers. My guess is that the actual reason was that his story was no longer labeled as "new" and thus did not show up at the front page that often anymore.

I also found out about my own stories that visibility is key if you want to have readers: As long as the story features on the front page under "recently added", you get new readers. If not, then not (or much slower). It does make a difference of course if your story has already gathered a bigger crowd of followers. I therefore really appreciate the idea of the "new story" section which seems to be a bit like a jump start aid or special protection for young stories. I was again wondering if there are other ways to help authors to get visibility, but couldn't really think of anything useful. Also... the more we crowd the front page, the less those effects might be. Then again, the front page is, apart from the search, the only real access, so there might be more ideas to use that.

I am pretty sure that quite a few of these points have already been discussed for quite a while here on CHYOA. In fact, I guess that some features here on CHYOA have been exactly set up following those discussions. Just wanted to get my thoughts out and maybe hear from you about some of these.

 

[Zingiber]

I used to add a note to my stories and chapters, "If you vote, comment!" but it didn't seem to spur much commenting, so I've mostly given up. If I contribute chapters to very popular stories ("At The Cabin", say), they're much more likely to get comments and likes, with the comments often from other contributors.

 

[merkros]

A reminder?

I recently tried to add, at the end of one my chapters, a quick reminder. The tone was like: "Hey, reader, by the way, we authors like reactions, so please remember more often to hit 'like' at the end of a chapter, not only here in this story, but in general whenever you had fun here on CHYOA." The results were quite astonishing: The chapter suddenly gained a massive boost in likes. More than it probably deserves in relation to other chapters I've written (then again, maybe it was really better, who am I to judge...?). But I found this whole thing quite interesting in many ways: I could see that there were suddenly names liking that chapter that I had never seen before (and we all know that there are often the same names popping up in the notification sections). Which basically means that, indeed, a lot of readers might not have been aware of how much we authors appreciate some kind of reaction or comment. So, if they do get reminded, they are more than happy to leave reaction. Also: Quite a few readers might experience the same "problem" as I did before: They want to leave reactions, but then they forget. So that's when the quick reminder comes in handy.

It's a pretty well known phenomena that reminding people to do something makes it more likely that they will. If you watch a lot of youtube(Especially some of the more famous channels) you notice this a lot too. A lot of them have little quips at the end of their video "Like and favorite if you enjoy and subscribe for more content". Nearly every famous channel has some variant on it whether it's a splash screen or them saying it and there's a reason they do it.

It works...

Dislikes and critique

In fact, by the way, let me add a quick thought on dislikes: I also really love critique and comments on what reader did NOT like about my chapters... The "dislikes" however often leave me a bit helpless, because I have no clue what it was that the readers disliked. It could be that they did not like the topic, it could be that they dislike the grammar or style... there are so many reasons, and if people would comment instead of just hitting the button, they could actually help authors to get better. In one case, I suspect for example that one of my chapters got a dislike because I decided to hand out a "The End" to the story, and the reader might have been disappointed.

I believe the ultimate solution to the dislikes problem is simply to eliminate the dislikes and keep criticism to comments only. Nearly every notable writer on chyoa has been a victim of dislike abuse. You could set up a system where someone who disliked a chapter could leave critique anonymously. That way people can dislike and leave constructive criticism without putting themselves at risk of being targeted by a slighted writer, but as long as the dislikes are around...it's going to be abused.

Especially considering how disproportionate of an influence dislikes have than likes on your rating. My story was ranked somewhere in the twenties back in May before (I suspect) a spiteful writer who i had a falling out with around the same time disliked quite a lot of chapters. Now? Well, I paged through a lot of stories sorted by ranking and I didn't see it. Another story Jessica's Choices, another fairly popular story with 837 likes, but has like a 93-95% rating due to dislikes. It's currently ranked 872 in rating. You only need 19 likes and 0 dislikes to have a "higher" rating than it. That just doesn't seem right to me.

Visibility

Honestly, I don't have too much to really say about the visibility thing. As you mentioned, there's not really too much that can be done to add to that that hasn't already. Perhaps you could have multiple stories of the week, but that would detract from whoever would typically get story of the week.

The best way to remain visible is to simply write regularly for that story.

 

[gene.sis]

In fact, I even dare to say that most of us do this for the feedback.

I would also write without feedback.
The point is, that I wouldn't publish without feedback!

A reminder?

I could imagine an automatic reminder, which pops up occasionally.
Something like "You seem to like it here. Don't you want to give feedback (like and/or comment) to support the author?" or "Before you continue, please consider to rate the chapter." (maybe a transparent section where the reader have to click on, before he can choose an answer.)
The reminder could pop up every 10th chapter if you vote less than 50% of the chapters, you read.
If you vote less, the rate could go up.

You could set up a system where someone who disliked a chapter could leave critique anonymously. That way people can dislike and leave constructive criticism without putting themselves at risk of being targeted by a slighted writer, but as long as the dislikes are around...it's going to be abused.

I think, that this could work anyway...

I was again wondering if there are other ways to help authors to get visibility, but couldn't really think of anything useful.

I could imagine a "personalized" front page to e.g. exclude categories, you are not interested in.

 

[Javalar]

I believe the ultimate solution to the dislikes problem is simply to eliminate the dislikes and keep criticism to comments only. Nearly every notable writer on chyoa has been a victim of dislike abuse. You could set up a system where someone who disliked a chapter could leave critique anonymously. That way people can dislike and leave constructive criticism without putting themselves at risk of being targeted by a slighted writer, but as long as the dislikes are around...it's going to be abused.

Especially considering how disproportionate of an influence dislikes have than likes on your rating. My story was ranked somewhere in the twenties back in May before (I suspect) a spiteful writer who i had a falling out with around the same time disliked quite a lot of chapters. Now? Well, I paged through a lot of stories sorted by ranking and I didn't see it. Another story Jessica's Choices, another fairly popular story with 837 likes, but has like a 93-95% rating due to dislikes. It's currently ranked 872 in rating. You only need 19 likes and 0 dislikes to have a "higher" rating than it. That just doesn't seem right to me.

I am also not sure if I understand the rating percentage system. Thing is, while the dislikes cause apparently quite a bit of trouble, they are, in theory, useful. If you just count the likes, then you'll quickly end up with a list of stories that is more or less similar to the "views" and the "chapter depth": More is more. More chapters means more views, more views means more likes. It's simple math, mostly. There are some exceptions (stories that are very deep but don't have a lot of chapters in total, because they have almost no branches, etc.), but in general, old, long-running stories will always pop up first. The Like-System could be an option to showcase newer stories which have not yet 1000+ chapters, but even with only 50-100 chapters have already gained an enthusiastic audience.

That being said, I agree that in the end the like/dislike system will always be a bit flawed, because you don't know exactly what it was that people appreciated - or not. For example, if I would dislike, I only do it for a story with bad, boring writing: Cheap plots, unrealistic character development, etc. I would not dislike for a fetish I don't share, etc. Because you can always argue "not my cup of tea, but maybe interesting for somebody else".

I could imagine an automatic reminder, which pops up occasionally.
Something like "You seem to like it here. Don't you want to give feedback (like and/or comment) to support the author?" or "Before you continue, please consider to rate the chapter." (maybe a transparent section where the reader have to click on, before he can choose an answer.)
The reminder could pop up every 10th chapter if you vote less than 50% of the chapters, you read.
If you vote less, the rate could go up.

The idea sounds nice, but I am afraid it would also be just seen as just another annoying addition which you simply ignore. Much like advertisement or any other popup.

I could imagine a "personalized" front page to e.g. exclude categories, you are not interested in.

That's an interesting idea. Although sometimes, I check out stories which are in a categorie that normally does not interest me. In the end, a really good story will almost always be fun to read. So this would encourage the typical "filter bubble".

 

[merkros]

I am also not sure if I understand the rating percentage system. Thing is, while the dislikes cause apparently quite a bit of trouble, they are, in theory, useful. If you just count the likes, then you'll quickly end up with a list of stories that is more or less similar to the "views" and the "chapter depth": More is more. More chapters means more views, more views means more likes. It's simple math, mostly. There are some exceptions (stories that are very deep but don't have a lot of chapters in total, because they have almost no branches, etc.), but in general, old, long-running stories will always pop up first. The Like-System could be an option to showcase newer stories which have not yet 1000+ chapters, but even with only 50-100 chapters have already gained an enthusiastic audience.

The problem is showcasing newer "Hot" stories without penalizing the older, larger stories. Right now, that's what's happening. Since dislikes have such a huge effect on the rating. Stories with thousands of likes are being dragged farther and farther down the list by dislikes to the point where you only need a handful of likes to overtake their rating as my example shows.

Perhaps a new section of stories could be set up where these "hot" chapters could be showcased. Maybe have it based on number of likes per day/week/whatever, because most stories seem to get a surge of upvotes within the first few months of their creation...which then slows down considerably as the regular viewers who form their opinion on the story and move on. At least that is what happened with my story.

Is it a perfect solution? No, perhaps not. If an old, popular story has an incredibly active development period, or team and the chapters are good and there are a lot of them, then they may show up there. As well as whenever a story becomes Story of the Week(which is another good way for new and surging stories to get noticed).

Another option which is way simpler is to set up a Top New Stories bit somewhere. Again, I'm not sure where it would be set up, but it would be a section where stories that are newer than...Six months or something to be showcased. That way new stories aren't fighting against stories with an absolutely enormous number of likes.

Of course, with either of these solutions, the issue of dislikes dragging ratings down by an incredible amount remain.

 

[Sthaana]

Honestly, I don't have too much to really say about the visibility thing. As you mentioned, there's not really too much that can be done to add to that that hasn't already. Perhaps you could have multiple stories of the week, but that would detract from whoever would typically get story of the week.

The best way to remain visible is to simply write regularly for that story.

I think that maybe having a "Word Count", as well as Thread Depth and amount of chapters. Maybe also an option to mark a chapter as "Porn" or "Plot"
I know that I often go by the size of a story when looking for new stuff, which might be of disadvantage to people who (like me) write a small number of long chapters.

Also, using tags should be mandatory, for the good of the writers, maybe do away with Categories and just go by tags. That way, folks can find their niche more quickly.
Few things are more frustrating than reading through a bunch of build-up to a payoff that isn´t your fetish...

 

[gene.sis]

"Word Count", as well as Thread Depth and amount of chapters.

maybe
- "words per chapter average"
- "chapters per 1 story depth average" (to give a hint about very linear or very broad stories)

"Porn" or "Plot"

like that idea

 

[merkros]

Also, using tags should be mandatory, for the good of the writers, maybe do away with Categories and just go by tags. That way, folks can find their niche more quickly.
Few things are more frustrating than reading through a bunch of build-up to a payoff that isn´t your fetish...

I disagree with the complete removal of Categories as a whole. Categories are great if you're looking for a broad idea of what genre or type of story you wish to read where tags are a bit more specific. However ,I do believe that chapter tags should be showcased a bit more.

Perhaps there could be a way for a reader to see how the chapter is tagged before reading it. So that if they're getting into something weird, or they're not interested in; they can back out.

A counter of how many times a tag comes up in a story may also be useful. A tag only has to show up once for it to appear as a tag in the story info. Someone may discount a story for having a fetish they don't like immediately because it shows up in the list of tags...even if the story only has one such scene out of many multiple hundreds.

 

[Javalar]

Perhaps a new section of stories could be set up where these "hot" chapters could be showcased. Maybe have it based on number of likes per day/week/whatever, because most stories seem to get a surge of upvotes within the first few months of their creation...which then slows down considerably as the regular viewers who form their opinion on the story and move on. At least that is what happened with my story.

Something along those lines sounds useful and an interesting idea to me. "Hot stories of the week/month". Those would probably be the same stories which at the moment are most worked on (which is just fair), but which might not be on the front page every single day.

Is it a perfect solution? No, perhaps not. If an old, popular story has an incredibly active development period, or team and the chapters are good and there are a lot of them, then they may show up there. As well as whenever a story becomes Story of the Week(which is another good way for new and surging stories to get noticed).

Story of the Week is a wonderful idea, and I was allowed to benefit from it already. It gave my story quite a boost and certainly made people aware of it who otherwise had not stumbled over the story. How is the story of the week determined? Is it the admin's choice or are there parameters at work as well?

Another option which is way simpler is to set up a Top New Stories bit somewhere. Again, I'm not sure where it would be set up, but it would be a section where stories that are newer than...Six months or something to be showcased. That way new stories aren't fighting against stories with an absolutely enormous number of likes.

Another idea that sounds useful and feasible to me: "Top New Stories of the last 6 months" would probably be a section which would, indeed, collect quite some useful stories.

I think that maybe having a "Word Count", as well as Thread Depth and amount of chapters. Maybe also an option to mark a chapter as "Porn" or "Plot"
I know that I often go by the size of a story when looking for new stuff, which might be of disadvantage to people who (like me) write a small number of long chapters.

Word Count could be an interesting indicator, although shorter word counts can be rooted in quite different reasons. It could be bad writing, but it could also hint at a more dynamic story where authors want to give their audience a lot of choices and branches. So I am not sure if I would actually use that indicator to browse for stories. Of course, it could help those stories with longer chapters, which take on a more "literary style" to be showcased a bit better.

Porn/Plot also sounds like a good idea, although I would argue that some porn chapters can be plot chapters, if well crafted. But I can see different kinds of readers being interested in different kinds of stories: Those with a lot of sex action, and those which focus more on plot (maybe even to make their porn sections more intense). So some kind of porn/plot ration might be very interesting as a search mechanism. Then again, the problem with that would certainly be that it's impossible to mark all the chapters already published afterwards. There would be a lot of blanks there...

Also, using tags should be mandatory, for the good of the writers, maybe do away with Categories and just go by tags. That way, folks can find their niche more quickly.
Few things are more frustrating than reading through a bunch of build-up to a payoff that isn´t your fetish...

The tag-discussion is a very interesting one, but we are straying away here from the original topic, I fear, because ultimately, the tags don't really help to attract more readers or make readers interact more - they can be just a very useful tool to find stories in which you might be interested. Unless, of course, we are talking about displaying tags much more prominently, and giving them the same status as categories. But then again, tags and categories often turn out to be quite similar... And those which are not are already deep down the rabbit hole of special fetishes, mostly...

I disagree with the complete removal of Categories as a whole. Categories are great if you're looking for a broad idea of what genre or type of story you wish to read where tags are a bit more specific. However ,I do believe that chapter tags should be showcased a bit more.

Perhaps there could be a way for a reader to see how the chapter is tagged before reading it. So that if they're getting into something weird, or they're not interested in; they can back out.

A counter of how many times a tag comes up in a story may also be useful. A tag only has to show up once for it to appear as a tag in the story info. Someone may discount a story for having a fetish they don't like immediately because it shows up in the list of tags...even if the story only has one such scene out of many multiple hundreds.

A tag counter would be a great idea and could also boost the relevance of the "Relevance" search. As of now, I don't really see a lot of usefulness in that one (how does it even work?).

In fact, after tagging my story at the beginning, I stopped completely, because I could not see the real benefit. There are some stories which have a lot of tags, which, in the end, just messes up the "About" section with an endless litany of words, and in the end are totally pointless, because, obviously, you can expect a long story with a lot of contributors to touch almost any topic and any fetish at some point. I am, for example, not a big fan of incest stories, but if "incest" turns up to be one of 40 different tags, that does not help me at all. Of course I don't skip on a story that seems nicely written, because it could turn up with a chapter I dislike along the long rinde.

And yes, if tags were counted, that would make the whole list so much more useful. (Although I am dreading the idea of retroactively tagging all my current 200+ chapters).

- "chapters per 1 story depth average" (to give a hint about very linear or very broad stories)

That's also a very nice idea (which again probably belongs more into the "suggestion" thread) because it would make it easier to find stories which have more of a "game" character, in contrast to the stories which are more or less linear. I am sure there are reader groups passionate about both different types here, so that might definitely help. Personally, one of my goals for my current story is to always include at least 2 options at the end of each chapter, with the exclusion of those chapters which link other chapters together or are somehow else part of the linear narrative.

(It should exclude linked chapters though, because that could distort the figure.)